


Canicule

by barricadeur



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Astronomy, Canon Era, Classical References, M/M, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 19:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barricadeur/pseuds/barricadeur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras and Grantaire on a hot summer night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Canicule

"Just there -- those nine stars over the church spire, do you see them? That's the Busty Maiden, and beside her is the Randy Goat, with his horn pointing up her skirt. And above, of course, you have the Defrocked Priest, whose glowing prick points due north --"  
  
"Grantaire," Enjolras said, lifting his head from Grantaire's shoulder. "I do not believe those are real constellations."  
  
They lay together on the roof of the building where Grantaire took his rooms, refugees from the August heat that swaddled Paris like a squalling babe in arms.  A year ago, heat like this had lit the flames of discontent and brought down a king; this year, the people's anger was no match for the National Guard ( _not yet_ , Enjolras told himself), and so the faubourgs teemed with impotent anger and sweltered restively without end in sight.    
  
Those who could afford to quit the city were long gone to the country, leaving the poor to seek respite wherever they could. Enjolras might have gone home to his parents' estate, but he had not spoken to them since the events of last July -- they were no doubt as dismayed by the Citizen-King as Enjolras himself, but their loyalties lay with the Duchess de Berry and her coterie of exiled nobles.    
  
Combeferre and some of the others had hired a coach to take them to his family's home near Limoges, the rumored early apple harvest turning even their most citified friends into agronomists. Enjolras stayed behind, pleading work. He did not know what reason Grantaire had given, but he suspected that neither of them convinced Combeferre. The exaggerated pantomime they had come to adopt in public -- Enjolras's disdain and Grantaire's soporific melancholy -- might fool their more gullible compatriots, but Combeferre knew him too well to be swayed. More than once in general company, after Enjolras's gaze drifted towards its favored path along the curve of Grantaire's neck, he looked up to find Combeferre regarding them both. They never spoke of it -- to Enjolras's enduring gratitude, as for once in his life he could not find the proper words to explain. All the ones he knew were either base or trite. But Combeferre's perceptiveness was matched by his discretion, and he had left with only a parting, "be well."  
  
At first, Enjolras was sure he had made a grievous mistake: the days grew hotter still, and the breezeless air became a miasma of pulverized manure, dust and rotting garbage.  Desiring to take full advantage of their friends' departures, he invited Grantaire to stay his and Combeferre's quarters, but the combined heat of two bodies sharing a single bed proved so unpleasant that Grantaire departed the next morning by mutual agreement.    
  
Grantaire, in contrast, seemed remarkably adapted to the weather. Enjolras had often heard from their friends that Grantaire knew the best places for all sorts of endeavors, and indeed they were not wrong: the shadiest path in the Jardin du Luxembourg, the cleanest bathing barge on the Seine, the unguarded entrance by the Barrière d'Enfer that led down into the cool depths of the catacombs.  Enjolras knew Paris best from the eagle's eye view furnished by maps, and he marveled at this new city Grantaire revealed to him.  
  
Tonight, when Enjolras had seen the basket of victuals tucked under Grantaire's arm, he'd assumed they were off on some similarly exotic urban peregrination. Although their actual destination was closer at hand, there was still a certain wonder to it: the thicket of stars above and the oil lamps of the streets below, as though Paris itself were an inverse image of the heavens, cast by some divine camera obscura.  As a child, he'd learned the names of all the constellations, before more pertinent knowledge pushed ancient superstitions from his mind; he'd told Grantaire as much, and asked if he remembered them.    
  
"Are you impugning my scientific learning, sir?" Grantaire smiled. Their fingers overlapped over the bottle of chenin blanc, the sole remainder of supper's picnic feast. "It is true, I am not your Combeferre or one of his fellow polytechniciens, but I have known _les neuf soeurs_ as well as any man and better than some -- in another life, I could have been the Venerable Master of Urania and her cohort. I have read the _Almagest_ and its table of chords, although my mind was too clumsy to play them and my ears too base to hear the music of the spheres. I spent an afternoon asleep atop the _Somnium Scipionis_ , and in my dreams the sun traversed its ecliptic to set Carthage ablaze as Dido wept. I know how universes rise and fall: Ptolemy slew Pythagoras, Copernicus slew Ptolemy, and Moravian wine at a banquet slew Tycho Brahe when a duelist's blade could not.  A nose made of gold and silver and a kidney full of stones: what an alchemical contraption is a man!  Galileo and his moons, Newton and his bruised noggin: a man thinks, and the heavens shift. ' _Eppur si muove_.'"  
  
"'And yet it moves,'" Enjolras echoed. "The Church, for all its power, could not change the rightful organization of the universe."  
  
"But they had power enough to place Galileo under house arrest for all his remaining days."  
  
"History regards him as a great man, who sacrificed for truth." Enjolras gestured at the stars.  "He suffered for a higher cause."  
  
"And so you would all throw yourself off the Leaning Tower of Pisa, if only to prove the mechanics of gravity." Barbed words, but delivered lightly, and softened with a sweep of his lips over the crown of Enjolras's head.  In this heat, neither of them could find the energy to argue. Much easier to sit, bodies sloped together, passing the wine between them and watching the curving arm of the Milky Way wrap around the earth.  
  
"You cast your lot with the future," Grantaire said, more quietly. His hand passed through Enjolras's hair, sifting the strands. The darkness concealed Enjolras's pleased expression, although not his soft sigh.  "The disposition of the age: accepted wisdom quavers and topples, and ancient mysteries shrink before the light of science. _Veritas temporis filia_. But for me, the present suffices.  Tomorrow, they will look upon all my truths and call them folly, so why should I not hold folly as truth? Why not call Boötes a tavern wench, and Ursa Major a horny goat?"  
  
"And the Defrocked Priest?"  
  
Grantaire chuckled. "An unfortunate union between Cepheus and Ursa Minor. No more than the old king deserved, for chaining his daughter Andromeda to a rock to be devoured by a sea monster.  She's up there, too, along with her champion."  
  
"Perseus?"  
  
"Just there." Grantaire pointed at another portion of the sky.  
  
Enjolras stared up, but the pattern of the stars escaped him.  "He founded Mycenae, didn't he?"  
  
"Another king -- the sky is lousy with them." Grantaire cupped the side of Enjolras's face. "I would place you up there with them, you know.  I disdain politics, but for you, I would be a celestial Jacobin."  
  
Enjolras eased his hand away, but did not let go of it. "I am no demigod, Grantaire.  Do you still think me such, after all that has transpired between us?"  
  
"No," Grantaire said. "I know only too well that you are mortal. And among the stars, you would be safe." He looked unbearably sad, then, as if the choice were really in his power and weighed upon his conscience.  
  
"I would not want it," Enjolras promised, pressing his hand, "for then I could not do this." And kissed him, worrying those frowning lips until they softened to a more agreeable cast.    
  
Time passed, and the stars continued their preordained transit across the sky -- unobserved, now, as more earthly matters claimed Enjolras's attention.  Hours after sunset, the heat had not yet subsided, but Enjolras barely felt it; another heat kindled low in his chest and spread through his body like grapeshot.  His blood thrummed in his veins, and when he slid his fingers under Grantaire's shirt, Grantaire gave a sound as though he'd been scalded.  
  
"Shall we go downstairs?" Grantaire murmured, when Enjolras at last released his mouth. One of the small, flat buttons on Grantaire's shirt put up a valiant defense, but Enjolras redoubled his efforts and soon it surrendered. "My bed --"  
  
"No," Enjolras said, lips set against the furrow at the back of Grantaire's neck, where his curls lay matted against his skin. "I would have you here, among the stars with me." He would not have thought himself capable of such sentiment, but he was not ashamed to say it now, and the taste of salt on Grantaire's feverish skin tempered the sweetness on his tongue. He sought it out again, and again, until Grantaire turned to meet him.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was inspired by an anon, who asked me to write three sentences of an enjolras/grantaire stargazing au. i'm not exactly sure how a three-sentence au became the first canon-era fic i've ever written, but i'm not complaining.
> 
> this story is embarrassingly chock-full of classical and historical references; [this post on my tumblr](http://barricadeur.tumblr.com/post/57702262803/canicule-research-footnotes-authors-ramblings) gives the gory details. four relevant translation notes:
> 
> -"canicule," means heatwave, and comes from the star sirius, which rose and set with the sun during august, the hottest month of the year.  
> -"les neuf soeurs" refers to the nine muses of classical mythology.  
> -"eppur si muove" means, as enjolras says, "and yet it moves." galileo said it right after the catholic church forced him to recant his claims that the earth revolves around the sun.  
> -"veritas temporis filia" means "truth is the daughter of time," or "time reveals the truth."
> 
> the incomparable [goshemily,](http://archiveofourown.org/users/goshemily/pseuds/goshemily) [acchikocchi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/acchikocchi/pseuds/acchikocchi), [harborshore](http://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore/pseuds/harborshore) and [ark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark) all shepherded this story into being with their generous praise and helpful critiques. truly, ain't nobody fresher than my motherfucking clique.


End file.
